Day 83

5.02: If you’re reading this because you’re bored, keep going. Not reading this and remaining bored might give you a heart attack. Don’t do it kids.

A couple of researchers publishing in the International Journal of Epidemiology reckon you can be bored to death, or at least bored into a fatal cardiovascular accident, which I presume is a singularly un-boring experience. But not apparently life-savingly so.

So, the basic message is, if you’re youngish, have a boring job, and are a girl, turn off your TV set and do something less boring instead. Or carry a defibrillator. If you’ve got two of the three, you should probably at least wear an oxygen tank and keep a copy of Schott’s Almanac in your back pocket.

The only example of someone dying of boredom that I can think of is the actor George Sanders, who is most famous for being in All About Eve, but I remember mainly from the second Pink Panther movie. Anyway, his suicide note said: “Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”

But then he didn’t technically die of boredom so much as five bottles of Pentobarbital he drank on an idle afternoon.

Now that’s an interesting – if morbid – fact or two. Here’s another one: In China sodium pentobarbital is used for executions by lethal injection.

Isn’t that interesting? If you are a youngish woman with a boring job, then I may just have saved your life. But it probably wears off quite fast. So teach yourself to juggle or something… with flaming Rubik’s cubes.

6.56: Not too bad again, although the word count’s not colossal this morning. All brains have at least been crammed back into their skulls today, which they weren’t when I left the house yesterday – it was strangely troubling feeling.; partly I think I was worried I’d forget, and end up with a story littered with brains like left luggage in a railway carriage. It’s very hard to do resolution when there are unaccounted-for brains lingering in your pages.